NEARLY five months after Billboard Magazine controversially named her its Reggae Artist Of The Year, British singer Joss Stone has given her take on the furor that accompanied the announcement.

In an interview with Billboard’s Soul Sisters Podcast, aired yesterday, Stone said she was not surprised at the reaction. In fact, when Damian Marley suggested she record a reggae album five years ago, she predicted an uproar.“Everyone will be so mad with me if I do that!” she recalled telling him. Her warning was prophetic. Water For Your Soul, which Marley co-produced, was the best-selling reggae album of 2015. At the time Billboard ‘crowned’ Stone in late December, it had sold 27,000 copies.

Reaction was swift and harsh. Many critics claimed Stone’s album was not reggae and she won the award because she is white. On Harry’s Symphony, a song from Water For Your Soul, Stone borrowed from Cocoa Tea’s Young Lover, Barrington Levy’s On The Telephone, Be Careful by Matthew McAnuff, and Inner Circle’s Bad Boys.

Stephen Marley

The album is not Stone’s first attempt at reggae. On her second album, 2004’s Mind Body & Soul, she worked with bass player Chris Meredith and guitarist Earl ‘Chinna’ Smith (both former musicians of Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers) on the song Less Is More.

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